Why BCAAs are suboptimal: Results from experiments from our own lab

🥛 Why protein quality matters and why BCAAs, especially Valine and Isoleucine, are suboptimal for muscle growth.

🧑‍🔬 Here is a summary of an experiment we have done in the lab: Muscle cells were first starved from all amino acids for 1h. Then a high dose (5mM) of leucine, valine, isoleucine or all BCAAs together was added to the cells for 30 min. In two other conditions only glutamine or all 20 amino acids (growth medium) were added.

🤓 What you see here are the results of a western blot. A method often used in biology to show the abundance/phosphorylation of a protein. The more intense the band, the more activated the protein is. Here, we measured the phosphorylation of S6K1, a key kinase that gets activated by the mTOR complex. mTOR regulates the synthesis of new proteins and thus to a certain extent muscle growth.

💡 This small in vitro experiment clearly shows that leucine in a potent activator of mTOR. Interestingly, this small in vitro experiment shows that from all the BCAAs, only leucine can activate mTOR. Valine and Isoleucine do not do anything.

👌 Additionally, this experiment shows leucine or BCAAs alone are less efficient when it comes to stimulating mTOR compared to when all 20 amino acids are available.

🚨 Drop the BCAAs and eat your chicken filet or down the whey shake. 😀

#science #mTOR #biology #westernblot #leucine #aminoacids